I have made Arizona flag guitars before but I wanted to make one Special for the Arizona State Fair 

This is the short story with pictures and a link at the bottom to my YouTube Video

The theme for the Arizona State Fair Guitar is Arizona. When you think of Arizona you think of Sunsets, Copper, Turquoise, and Mesquite. So I wanted to incorporate all of Arizona into a beautiful custom guitar. I thought it would be Candy Apple Red representing the Sunsets, and have a double Tortoise Shell binding to honor the Arizona Desert Tortoise. I chose to use Maple for the neck and Mesquite for the fretboard and pickguard with rifle shell casings for the markers. I wanted all of the hardware to be Copper so the Copper Electroplating is where I started

COPPER ELECTROPLATING THE HARDWARE 

To copper electroplate you have to make a copper sulfate solution and use a 6 volt power supply After copper plating I used clear powder coat to preserve the copper finish from patina

 

THE NECK and FRETBOARD

For the neck I used a beautiful piece of maple I had in my inventory but for the mesquite I made several trips to the wood store and finally found the piece you see here, The piece underneath the neck in the second picture would eventually be inlaid with Turquoise and become the pickguard. All of the Mesquite came from the same board. After building the fretboard I inlaid the Shell Casings for markers

THE FIRST BODY

Originally I had a piece of solid Basswood, double bound with tortoise shell binding, painted candy apple red. I wanted to have the state flag on the front in some sort of abstract way. After I did that it didn't have the look I wanted. It just looked like a painted guitar with a blue pickguard.
The second picture shows how it is taped off to create the yellow rays. After Painting the yellow you take the tape off exposing the red, and you have alternating red and yellow rays, After I painted it looked good but wasn't what I wanted. 

THE SECOND BODY (Body 2.0)

On some other projects I have used beetle bark Blue Pine and I love the way the blue streaks in the wood finish with stain. So I picked out a piece that had beautiful figuring in the grain and milled it down to a 1/4" thick. I made a jig for my table saw and cut 13 stripes at 14 degrees each. I staggered the pattern. For the upper bout of the guitar I used the same type of wood but a solid piece (1/4" thick) and capped another piece of Basswood. Now I have a design that I am happy with!

Then I routed the channel on both sides for the binding

After making sure the binding channel was free of defects I attached the binding with a special glue and held it in place with binding tape while it dried

After Sanding the entire body smooth, I was ready to finish the back and sides with candy apple red and a durable urethane finish

Then I started the tedious process of dying the individual stripes, starting with red.
I used an Transparent Acrylic Stain because I wanted each ray to show the different wood grain pattern

Below is the project nearing completion. I haven't put the copper star on yet and I'm not thrilled with the black pickguard or the copper knobs but I do like the red pickups that I wound for this project; I call them "Arizona Specials"

Below is the final Guitar. I made a Mesquite Pickguard because even though I liked the shape of the black one I had previously made the Mesquite matched the fretboard better, and I was able to add Turquoise inlay in it . I custom crafted a new set of knobs because the copper ones needed something extra. The finished guitar as entered is shown below.

If you click on the picture or the link it takes you to my YouTube channel and you can see the final guitar in a short video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TeL1q5oGzI